Rudder Cay, Cave Cay, and Black Point

We headed south as planned and found anchorage at Rudder Cay.  It was a beautiful, protected cove (protected on 3 sides). 

The only issue with the cove was that it was very tight for 2 boats.  During our trip, we have encountered 2 pretty large storms that has made us very cautious about anchoring and making sure we have plenty of room in all directions to swing if the wind changes.  This again was a concern in this anchor spot.  We ended up putting the 2 boats very close to each other (but not the rocks) and hoped for the best.

 We celebrated Russell's B-day in the afternoon with tea and cake (from Roosevelt's wife) and spent the evening consumed with concern about the boats in this small cove.

The night brought a pretty significant threat of a storm, but it passed to the north and west of us.  Both Dan and Russell where up until 2:30AM watching the storms and making sure they were ready it they came at us.  The weather stayed calm and Dan/Russell were relieved, but tired.

We decided to move on from this spot because of the anxiety it caused the night before.  Before we left, we explored the area and found a cave with a rope to swing on and a stainless steel piano and mermaid that was placed by David Copperfield (the magician) right outside of an island that is adjacent to his.  We suspect he placed the statues outside of someone else’s island to divert traffic away from his.

This is Drew diving down to the piano.  His life jacket was removed so he could try to go down.  He did a great job in getting down in a very strong current.

Our next stop was Cave Cay.  This is a partially developed island that has/had the intent on creating a vacation destination for both cruisers and folks who want to enjoy island life.  It is a family owned island.  They began building this island (dredging their very protected cove) 23 years ago. It took them 8 years to dredge out the cove/marina.

The island is still not complete.  The housing is partially built and is deteriorating because of the lack of attention.  We all felt like it was a scene out of Jurassic Park.  A very cool place, but just not complete and just not right.  

We found on the internet that the island was for sales for a mere 90 million dollars. I have a feeling that they were trying to recoup the millions they have already invested.  It looks like they just simply ran out of money.  The place has SO much potential to be great.  We found ourselves talking for several hours about how we could fix it and what we could do to make this work.  Dream on....

We spent a couple of days in Cave Cay, one day walking and relaxing on the pristine beaches, another afternoon spear fishing.  Dan is getting much better.  He speared 4 fish in about 15 minutes.

We moved on from Cave Cay and stopped for a couple of nights, a couple of coves down from Black Point (3.2 miles south).  The area is what you would imagine Exumas to be.  

The anchorage site was very shallow so Dan and I had to anchor much further away from the shore than we wanted to.  This brought pretty significant movement during our 2 day stay.  We headed into the settlement on day 2, to get on land for a bit.  The dingy rides over and back were intense, but we did some small provisioning and took a small tour of the island with Shory, our "driver".

We are moving to Hawksbill Cay today (Tuesday) as we keep heading north for our return trip home.